1.5 On The Importance Of Dancing With Beginners

While there is no question that dancing with a better partner will make
you *look* good, and that with such a partner you can concentrate more
on styling details and so on because the lead and follow doesn't need
so much attention, it is not the best way to practice lead/follow
skills. If learning leaders only dance with accomplished followers and
vice-versa, they won't develop great leading/following skills, because
they won't *need* to. Now let's suppose that YOU are a great leader or
follower. What happens if you dance only with other great dancers?
Your lead and follow skills will gradually *deteriorate* -- because
you're not working them very hard. After some months without exposure
to beginners, you may be surprised to find that you can't dance with
them very well, even though they seem to do okay with other beginners.

You learn how to dance better by dancing with more experienced
partners. But you learn how to lead/follow better by dancing with less
experienced partners. Your skills are put much more to the test
dancing with a beginner than with an experienced dancer. It is easy to
lead/follow a great dancer. All your weaknesses as a leader/follower
show up with beginners. Dance with them and ask yourself why each
incorrectly led/followed figure didn't work and when you figure it out,
work on incorporating the fixes into all your dancing!

You cannot become a good dancer by dancing _only_ with the same
person. Dancing only with each other, you will become good at dancing
with each other with all the mistakes and bad habits that become
"correct" for you.

There is a certain type of character (leader) that one encounters
again and again if one has been dancing for any length of time: the guy
who only wants to dance with the best followers because he believes
they are the only partners who can match his high skill level. Often
what is REALLY going on is that only the best followers can compensate
for his mistakes or idiosyncrasies. They make him look good. But the
guy continues to think he's the tops because he insulates himself from
feedback. *Dancing with poor to average followers is a good reality
check.* If none but the best can follow your leads, I respectfully
suggest your leads could use some work. (Kelly Buckwalter has
expressed a similar idea in her classes). Also, that kind of thinking
ultimately harms their dancing. I've seen guys overestimate their
ability and abandon the study of technique FAR too soon. Consequently
it will take them a lot longer to reach the next level of skill.

This file is part of the lead/follow FAQ list. These are articles compiled from the newsgroup rec.arts.dance by Mark Balzer. Html-isation by Victor Eijkhout, victor at eijkhout dot net. See also the Rec Arts Dance FAQ list Copyright 1996/7/8/9 lies with the compiler, the maintainer and the contributors of various parts.

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